It has been a tough year for the
Willow Creek Community Church, the flagship congregation of the
“seeker-sensitive” movement. Most know that Willow Creek has set the
pace for 30 years in its redesign of the local church. More recently
Rick Warren, and his Saddleback Community Church, have stolen the
spotlight from Willow and, to some degree, eclipsed its influence on
new paradigm churches. But rest assured, Willow, along with its Willow
Creek Association, which boasts 12,000 member churches from 90
denominations, is still charting the way for those who look to
felt-needs, surveys, the latest innovations and market strategy,
instead of Scripture, for their structuring of the local church. When
Willow speaks, church leaders listen. When Willow marches out a new
product or method, churches around the globe fall in line. Whatever
Willow promotes others emulate.

So, as I said, it has been a tough year for Willow
Creek and for its followers as well. It was only in September of 2006
that Willow shuttered its highly acclaimed Axis experiment. Axis was
Willow’s “church-within-a-church” designed for 20- somethings. At one
point the ten year project boasted 2000 worshipers at services
designed especially for Generation Xers, but had fallen to 350 when
the leadership decided to shut it down. What Willow discovered was
that “Axis didn’t connect young adults with the rest of the
congregation. Once they outgrew the service, Axis members found it
hard to transition into the rest of the Chicago-area megachurch. Young
adults also struggled to meet and develop relationships with mentors
in the larger congregation.” Who would have thought that separating
the young people from the body of Christ for a decade would result in
integration issues when they grew up? Somebody must have missed the
fine print in a Barna survey. At any rate, Willow recognized its error
and folded Axis into the larger congregation. This move came too late
however for hundreds of Willow clones who were in lock step with the
mother church. Many started similar church-within-a- church
congregations under Willow’s leadership and most will now suffer the
same fate. As humiliating as the Axis failure had to be for Willow
Creek, the latest bombshell dwarfs it by comparison. Willow’s
leadership now admits, in the words of Bill Hybels, “We made a
mistake.” Hybels, founder, Senior Pastor and Chairman of the Board of
the Willow Creek Association, is referencing Willow’s philosophical
and ministerial approach to “doing” church. This is the approach
pioneered by Hybels and company, honed to perfection and dissimulated
to eager church leaders worldwide. This is the approach which
distinguishes the seeker-sensitive model from other models. It is this
approach that Hybels now admits is a mistake. Willow’s Confession

First, let me say that I admire Willow’s
transparency and humility on this matter. Not many people or groups
would make a public admission of error of this magnitude. To actually
admit that the model of “doing church” which they have poured 30 years
and millions of dollars into has been a mistake is incredulous. This
is not to say that Willow’s confession is without flaw, for while they
profess mistakes they still apparently think they have done pretty
well. And they still believe that they are the ones to lead the church
into the future, even if they have been wrong for three decades. But
more on that later; for now what are the specifics of the confession?

One of the executive pastors of Willow Creek, Greg
Hawkins, became deeply concerned that despite all the efforts of the
megachurch perhaps they were not being as effective as they thought.
As he watched people dropping money in the offering plate week after
week the thought nagged him, “Are we spending those folks money in the
right way?” In 2004, with Hybels’ permission Hawkins led a study of
the congregation asking the people how effective the programs and
ministry of Willow Creek had been in their lives. Later Hawkins turned
to 30 other Willow Creek Association churches to see if the results of
the study at Willow would be comparable at these churches – they were.
These results, which have been published in a new book, Reveal:
Where Are You?, have been described by Hybels as everything from
“earth breaking” to “mind blowing” in a disturbing way.

What are the specifics? Hawkins defines Willow’s
ministerial goal as “Trying to help people who are far from Christ
become disciples of Christ characterized by their love for God and
other people.” This is a most commendable goal, but how has Willow
gone about trying to accomplish this goal? “We do that,” Hawkins
states, “by creating a variety of programs and services for people to
participate in. Our strategy is to try to get people, far from Christ,
engaged in these activities. The more people are participating in
these sets of activities with higher levels of frequency it will
produce disciples of Christ.” This has been Willow’s methodology of
discipleship throughout the years – the philosophy that has been
transported and reproduced around the globe. But what was discovered,
via the multi-year, multichurch study, was disturbing. Hawkins
identifies three major discoveries.

First, that increasing levels of participation in
these activities does not predict whether a person will become a
disciple of Christ.

Secondly, in every church there is a spiritual
continuum in which “you can look at your congregation and put them
[the people] in one of five unique segments. The segments are aligned
around someone’s intimacy with Jesus Christ and how important that
relationship with Christ is to their lives.” The segments into which a
local church’s people can be neatly slipped are:

Segment 1 – Those who are just exploring
Christianity. Therefore, these are nonbelievers who are attending
services or activities provided by the church (i.e. unbelievers).

Segment #2 – Those who love Jesus and have a
relationship with Him and are growing in that relationship but are
fairly new in that relationship (i.e. new Christians).

Segment #3 – Those who are close to Christ; their
relationship with Christ is important to them on a daily basis. These
are people who “might pray, read the Bible and have thoughts of God”
on a daily basis (i.e. nominal believers).

Segment #4 – Those who center their lives on their
relationship with Christ. Their relationship with Christ is the most
important relationship in their entire lives (Hybels calls these
“fully devoted followers of Christ”).

Segment #5 – Believers who are stalled in their
relationship with Christ. They are not investing time on a regular
basis in their relationship with Christ. Although they are actually
investing time in church events on a regular basis they are not
investing time in their personal relationship with Christ (i.e.
nominal Christians).

The third “ground breaking” discovery was that each
of the segments had different needs, yet most churches deal with them
as if “one size fits all.” Also, the church activities that most
churches provide are most helpful in the first two segments. “Churches
do great things to help people in those segments,” Hybels states. But
the activities that seem to be helpful to the first two groups are
less helpful for the last three segments. As a result, the study
showed that “it is the ones in the first two segments who are the most
satisfied with local churches.” For instance, pre-Christians gave
Willow top marks and new believers were not far behind. However, “the
last three segments have increasing dissatisfaction; they are
disappointed with the role that the local church is playing in their
lives.”

The third segment, described by Hybels as growing
Christians, were much less pleased and the “fully devoted followers of
Christ (segment #4) were quite unhappy with Willow. This group says
“they are not being fed; they want more of the meat of the Word
of God; serious-minded Scripture taught to them; they want to be
challenged more.” And increasingly those in segment four (the “fully
devoted to Christ” segment), are thinking about leaving the local
church. Which is, Hawkins laments, “Incredibly sad; the people who
love God the most are the most disappointed by their local church?”

In response Hawkins told Hybels, “We’ve made a
mistake, what we should have done [as people became Christians] we
should have started telling people and teaching people that they have
to take responsibility to become self-feeders. We should have gotten
people, taught them how to read their Bibles between services, do the
spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own because what’s
happening to these people, the older they get the more they are
expecting the church to feed them, when in fact the more mature a
Christian becomes the more he becomes a self-feeder.” In order to
remedy these “mind-blowing” mistakes the leadership at Willow is
working hard “to rethink how we coach people to full spiritual
development.” They are pioneering “personal spiritual growth plans –
customized spiritual growth plans for everyone at Willow.” Hawkins
admits, “All of what we are discovering is rocking our world at our
church.” And it should be, for Hybels owns up, “Some of the stuff that
we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our
people grow and develop spiritually, when the data came back it wasn’t
helping people that much. Other things that we didn’t put that much
money into and didn’t put much staff against is stuff our people are
crying out for.” Hybels, in the light of this study tells us “I got
the wakeup call of my adult life… [It was] one of the hardest things I
have ever had to digest as a leader.”

What Hawkins and Hybels have discovered are things
that many churches have always known, although they have often been
intimidated by the megachurches into believing they were wrong. They
are discovering:

• That nickels and noses do not tell us if we have
a church that pleases God. The Lord never tells us the church
membership or attendance of the local churches in the New Testament.

And the two churches out of seven, given great
marks in Revelation chapters two and three, apparently were small and
poor (2:8-11; 3:7-13), while the churches who seemed to have it all
together were rebuked severely by the Lord (3:1-6; 14-22).

• That participation in programs does not produce
authentic disciples of Christ. While every church has programs the
Scriptures teach it is the Word of God through the power of the Spirit
that changes lives.

• That unbelievers and baby Christians will attend
a good show and even give high marks for the production, but those who
hunger for true spiritual life will be disappointed.

• That whatever is used to draw people must be
continued to keep them. If you attract people through entertainment
and superficial teaching, most will not hang around if you shift to
solid exposition of the Word and God-honoring ministries.

• That attempting to reach people for Christ
through meeting their felt-needs is a bottomless pit. Christ-centered
people are not likely to be developed by creating programs that cater
to their self-centeredness.

• That churches based on the foundation of secular
research, group opinion or surveys may produce a congregation that
pleases people for a time, but it will not produce a church that
pleases God. God has already given His design for the church in the
New Testament; it is neither necessary nor right for us to ignore that
design and create our own.

Implications

What does all of this mean to us; what are we to do
now? Hawkins offers two implications: First, we need to ask different
questions. We need to go beyond asking how many [people are coming to
our services and events]. We need to ask, are the things we are doing
helping people grow in their intimacy with Christ. We need to
ask not just leaders, but participants, what they need, what’s working
and what is not working. Secondly, Hawkins says, “We cannot do this
alone.” Willow therefore invites us to tell them what is working and
not working in our churches. In order to expedite this sharing of
pragmatic ideas Willow is entering into a whole new round of research.
They are inviting 500 additional churches (must be a member of the
Willow Creek Association) to participate in a survey that will give
them more data.

Where will all of this lead? It is important to
carefully ponder Hawkins’ idea at this point. He states, Here is our
dream – that we fundamentally change the way we do church; that we
take out a clean sheet of paper, and rethink all of our old
assumptions, replace them with new insights, insights that are
informed by research and rooted in Scripture. Our dream is to discover
what God is doing and how He is asking us to join Him in transforming
this planet (emphasis mine).

An Analysis

There are three issues, summarized well in the
above statement, that are very disturbing. First, haven’t we heard all
of this before? Isn’t this exactly what Hybels and the architects of
the seeker-sensitive movement told us 30 years ago? Whether they used
those exact words or not the cadence of the movement was that we must
“change the way we do church. We must take out a clean sheet of paper,
and rethink all of our old assumptions and replace them with new
insights.” For three decades now the evangelical church, to a large
degree, has been operating on the basis of the insights developed by
Willow Creek. As they look back, Willow has recognized that the
insights they developed were faulty – they did not accomplish their
stated purpose – they have led the church as a whole on a wild-goose
chase for a generation.

Even the “fully devoted followers of Christ”
(segment #4) give us pause. This is the group, within the Willow
circles, that is the most spiritually mature, yet even they don’t know
how to read their Bibles or feed themselves. Willow’s plan going
forward is not to adjust their services and ministries to feed this
spiritually hungry group; their plan is to teach them how to feed
themselves. And while I will admit that it is important to teach
people how to feed themselves, I have to ask why should these
serious-minded believers bother to come to Willow-type services at
all? Why not find good churches that are taking care of the flock in a
biblical manner? After all, Ephesians 4:11-16 is clear that it is the
responsibility of the church leadership to equip the saints through
the teaching of the Word of God. Having failed at virtually every
level to produce true disciples and develop biblical churches, Willow
wants to start all over again and they would like to take us with
them. We can trust them this time, we are assured, for they have new
research tools, new insights, and new programs. They will guide us
correctly this time – promise.

This is a bit incredible, but Hybels and Hawkins
are so winsome in their presentations, so sincere in their promises,
that millions will undoubtedly follow them once again, blindly, with
Bibles firmly left unexamined, down the road on this new adventure.

My second concern is that we are being called to
join God in “transforming this planet.” Since when has it been God’s
design to use the church to transform the planet? I know this is the
common rhetoric heard throughout evangelicalism recently, but it does
not find its basis in Scripture. We are to join God, as it were, to
make disciples and to herald the gospel which is able to “rescue
[people] from the domain of darkness, and transfer [them] to the
kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13), but we are not called
to help God transform the planet. He will do that in His own timing,
and without our help (2 Peter 3:10-13).

But the most disturbing element in this statement
is that once again Scripture takes a back seat to pragmatism. Research
and methods are the key to “new insights” and the next direction for
the church, not the Word of God. In Hawkins’ and Hybels’ two videos,
only once is Scripture mentioned, when Hawkins talks about new
insights “that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture.”
While the New Testament is God’s instructions for His church no actual
text of Scripture is mentioned. Instead Hawkins is lining up 500
Willow Creek Association churches to tell them “what is working for
you.” The Willow system was originally steeped in pragmatism rather
than Scripture, and it appears that nothing has changed. They are once
again going to the well of pragmatism – “tell them what works” and
they will develop programs and methods which will accomplish their
goals. Pragmatism has always been at the heart of the seeker movement
and still is. Willow is not repenting of their philosophy of ministry
– they are updating it. The last set of insights and methodologies did
not “work” but surely this new set will. At least that is what we are
being told.

It should be mentioned that Willow Creek should not
be shocked by their research. Critics of the seeker movement have been
pointing out these very flaws in their system since the beginning.
Time and again discerning Christian leaders have shown that the Willow
model is unbiblical and incapable of developing truly biblical
disciples of Christ. These critics have been ignored, ridiculed and
marginalized as negative, but their critique has proven true. Yet,
rather than paying careful attention to these evaluations and swinging
the movement back to a biblical pattern, Willow has consistently
returned to their research for answers, just as they are doing now.
The Next Step

In the Willow Creek Association’s self-description
we read, “We are driven by a calling to serve Christ-following leaders
as they build biblically functioning churches – authentic, Acts 2
communities of faith that reach increasing numbers of lost people and
grow them into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.” With this as
the stated goal we can empathize with Willow’s “earth shaking”
discovery that they have made a mistake. It is even ironic that those
who have grown into “fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ” are the
very ones most disappointed with the Willow system and are thinking of
leaving the churches.

We can see why Willow’s leadership wants to take
out a clean sheet of paper and start over. One has to wonder, however,
is the sheet of paper really that clean? Do the leaders have no agenda
in mind? I think they do, and it is evident in their move toward the
emergent church. For example, on April 9-11, 2008 the student ministry
at Willow Creek will be offering a conference called Shift. Their
advertisement brochure states, “As the world of student ministry
continues to shift and change, so do the needs of those who serve
students.

Recognizing this, our team has designed an event
that is unlike any other Student Ministries Conference we’ve ever
hosted.” The brochure promises to offer the students a variety of
models of ministry at the Conference. The fact is that it is balanced
toward mysticism and the emergent movement. Speakers include key
emergent leaders, Brian McLaren, Mark Yaconelli, Scot McKnight and Dan
Kimball.

Having discerned that the old way of the seeker
movement failed to produce the spiritual product they desired, Willow
is fast-forwarding to the newest wave that now promises what they did
30 years ago – “authentic, Acts 2 communities of faith.” This,
however, is an even more tragic step, for while the seeker movement
has gone astray in many areas in their attempt to change the way we
“do” church, the majority within the movement at least gave
lip-service to the fundamentals of the faith. The emergent church,
however, seeks not to change how we “do” church but to change the
church itself by challenging the non-negotiable doctrines of the
faith. Combining the emergent deconstructive philosophy with Willow
Creek’s influence and money could prove to be a powerful force for
destruction. What may be written on this next “clean sheet of paper”
in the future is far more concerning than the one that is being thrown
away today.
Send us your thoughts on this article.